Personally I would get a Sager as I feel they are better built and aren't owned by Dell. Only thing is clevo's can come with the 6990 but I have never seen it actually offered. Confuzzles me a bit since they are better and cheaper than some of the higher end nvidia cards.

Imglidinhere, that is the best post ever for anti-Dell; I actually repped Lampen for it after I saw him post it.

It's funny to see that there are so many people who keep bashing AW as if it were the devil himself. I'm sorry for those who had a few issues with AW, I personally had some troubles with the various Dell/AW computers I have owned through the years. However, when it happened, those issues were always fixed by Dell technicians who came home and replaced the parts that were defective, or just replaced the whole pc if any hardware was found defective during the first 21 days of use - sending the customer a brand new computer. Note: AW is the only company that does it. In fact, other brands such as Sager, Asus or Origin don't offer the warranty that AW does, so, in case of defective hardware users have to wait between 7 to 20 days before seeing their computer again - shipping the pc to their labs, wait until they replace the parts and ship it back to the customer. I agree that both Sager and Origin make amazing computers, which I really like. Yet, for reasons that go beyond the already great warranty AW offers, such as aesthetic and performance, I prefer buy AW. In my opinion, claiming that buying AW is a waste of money just shows disinformation and blind hostility.

Nevertheless, I don't actually care about brands. I just decide to invest my money where I think I can get the most of it, and so far AW has never disappointed me. The day it will happen, I simply buy something else.

Yes, I see this as a wise decision. As you know the new M18x is a very powerful notebook, and the dual 6990 will allow you to play whatever you want maxed out for a few years. And as I mentioned above, in case you stumble in any hardware problems, after you call tech support, you can arrange for a technician to come home and fix what's wrong. The only suggestion I might have is get only 4gb of ram, as you could easily upgrade them 8 or 16gb buying them somewhere else, like at newegg for example, and if you can really get the SSD. I can assure you will really notice the difference in performance. Once again, if getting it from Dell is too expensive, leave the stock hdd and get the SSD somewhere else at a cheaper price.

If I were you, I'd also consider the new M17x r3 equipped with the 580m. Check this out: a thorough review; built, battery life, benchies and all. Look at its performance in Crysis 2 dx11 and high res texts maxed out, with its single card.

For the love of God don't do it. You are going to lose a considerable amount of performance and will suffer a loss on your investment in the long-term. You won't have any of the upgrade options that you normally would for example. Why do you want to replace it?

Here's my experience with Alienware. Shelled out for a M15X with most of the bells and whistles back in 2009 so I had a mobile rig that was capable of gaming and doing most of my other tasks. Now keep in mind that I only sparsely used it compared to my normal rig.

First off the thing arrived with dead pixels. Not a large amount but more than enough to notice it. Of course that wasn't going to to work so I called Dell and quickly got connected to "Greg" in New Delhi whom I had to basically teach English to just so that I could tell him what was wrong. Well they sent a refurbished replacement screen and a tech came to my house to do it. He replaced the screen, booted it up, and surprise surprise the screen had dead pixels. Over the next several months I played this game over and over and it finally took me going through 7 customer services reps and their supervisors before I got someone to send a brand new screen rather than a refurbished piece of crap.

After the screen fiasco we entered a whole new episode of replacements. The first thing to go was my GPU. Cooling on these things just isn't very good and it constantly hovers around 90C on medium quality and more than likely burned itself out. Had to send it in to get repaired that time. Got it back in about 2 weeks and then it suddenly turned off one day and had to call Dell again. Turns out the motherboard went and sent it back for repairs. When I got it back a couple weeks passed and then it wouldn't power on again. Turns out the GPU went out AGAIN and had to be repaired. Got it back and then shortly there after the CPU crapped out on me and had to be replaced. Finally most of the components had been replaced in the computer and it had been gutted and reworked about a dozen times by now. Oh but wait there's more.

After all that the HDD decided to go as well and thankfully I convinced them to just send one out and I'd do it myself since I didn't wanna wait 3 days for to make an appointment for their useless technicians. As usual I got a refurbished model and it was damn close to dead when I got it. Called back and explained what happened and they sent another. Got another bad one. Finally got sent a brand new one than was working.

Flash forward to today. After numerous failures it no works rather well, but your sig rig would hands down make Alienware cry. If you want a powerful rig, upgrade your current one rather than throw your money down the hole. I assume you don't need it to be mobile.

TL;DR: Alienware is overpriced crap and you should spend that money upgrading your sigrig.

I'm sorry you had this experience, but this is kind of a 1-off. My Alienware experience has been completely different.

I think it's a great idea to get the M18x! It should be a pretty decent upgrade and the portability is a really nice bonus. You can still run eyefinity if you want. I have nothing but good things to say about your idea, if it works for your usages then go for it!

I agree with you. If we start looking for horror customer service stories we could find plenty about any brand - ASUS to cite one. As I mentioned in my post earlier, AW has a better warranty than the others and that's a fact. However, among so many cases someone may end up experiencing more issues than others. Personally, whenever I had problems, I armed myself with patience, called the customer service, politely explained my problem, followed the procedures, which ended up with either a technician coming home to replace the parts, or with Dell sending me a brand new computer, before the 21 days that is. One bad experience doesn't make AW overpriced crap. I could cite plenty of AW users who are completely satisfied with their computer - me included.

You buy it yet OP? Seems like a solid desktop replacement, especially with Crossfire 6990M's. Sager has some really good options as mentioned above, Alienware just comes with all the bells and whistles and lights.

A Sager NP7280 is a strong opponent w/ desktop CPU's. Looks like a brick though.